The battle's done, and we kind of won, so we sound our victory cheer: where do we go from here?
... a blog by Marc Lynch

September 03, 2008

Gause: Maliki's bid to be the strong man

Continuing the roster of pinch-hitters for the first week of the semester, I'm happy to post an argument made by Gregory Gause of the University of Vermont which has generated a great deal of discussion on at least two different Iraq focused list-serves and deserves a wider airing. Here it is. I hope to resume my own posting soon, perhaps even with some thoughts on this piece.*****

Guest Post: Maliki's Bid to be the Strong Man of IraqGregory Gause, University of VermontThe recent moves by Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki on a number of fronts seem to me to add up to a very ambitious push on Maliki's part to
become the strong man of Iraqi politics.

1. He is making himself the symbol of Iraqi nationalism by insisting
on a date certain for withdrawal of US forces. Of course, this is more
symbolic than real. Any deal will have plenty of loopholes in it. If
Maliki wants to keep US forces around after 2011, and McCain is in the
White House, he can do so. (Maybe not if Obama wins.) But the
appearances are important here. He can go to the provincial elections
(if they happen) and the national elections (if they happen) in 2009
saying that he is the man who got a timetable for American withdrawal.
Moreover, he just replaced the Foreign Ministry team negotiating with
the US side with his own team, headed by his national security adviser
Muwaffaq al-Ruba'i and made up of experts not from the FM but from the
prime minister's office. This is his negotiation now in a very personal
way. Just today the first major oil deal of the post-Saddam era was
announced, and it was with a Chinese company. Another bit of symbolism.

2. He has conducted a fairly successful campaign against the Sadrists,
or at least it seems so far. He has skillfully used the new Iraqi
forces and the US to cut at the power of the Mahdi Army and go after
Sadrist leaders and officials. In doing so, he has also portrayed
himself (with some accuracy) as the man who cleaned up militia
misbehavior in Basra. Whether this means that he can dominate the
Sadrists in elections in the south and center and Baghdad remains to be
seen. But he seems to have successfully worked himself into a position
where the Mahdi Army cannot act as a counter-weight to the forces of
the government. This means that he can exercise more control over
elections in the south and the center than would have been possible
before.

3. He is now openly taking on the Sahwa (Awakening Councils) forces,
demonstrating that he will not compromise on Shia Arab control of the
Arab parts of Iraq. He is reneging on his earlier promises to
integrate tens of thousands of Sahwa guys into the regular security
forces. He has brought the Tawaffuq front back into the government on
his own terms to act as his Sunni frontmen (and to show them that he is
dictating the terms, he had Adnan al-Dulaimi's son arrested just after
the deal). The Iraqi Army (his army, as far as we know) is now in
charge of security in Anbar. He has run many of the Awakening leaders
out of Baghdad. He has said repeatedly that there will be no militia
power in (Arab) Iraq -- no Mahdi, no Sahwa. That means no check on his
power (as long as he can control the army and security services).

4. He is pushing a bit against his own allies in his coalition itself.
There was a very interesting incident in Diyala province two weeks ago,
covered by al-Hayat. (Here is the URL to one of the stories in the
paper about what happened: (http://www.daralhayat.com/arab_news/levant_news/08-2008/Article-20080828-0a41baf1-c0a8-10ed-01bf-ee33937ffa68/story.html).
The Iraqi forces in Diyala entered Kurdish areas in the province
(Khanaqin) and ordered the peshmerga out. There was a stand-off,
eventually settled when Massoud Barazani made a rare trip to Baghdad to
work out the problem. But the taste left in the mouth of the Kurds was
not a pleasant one, and Maliki has made it clear that the Iraqi Army
can go wherever in Iraq he orders it (well, he hasn't tried to send it
into the KRG). Note also that, in displacing the Foreign Ministry team
negotiating with the US on the status of forces agreement, Maliki has
taken that portfolio from a Kurd (FM Hushayr Zibari) and given it to
one of his men. Meanwhile, Kirkuk awaits further developments. One
even picks up hints of tensions between Maliki and ISCI, though there
is much less in terms of tangible evidence on this one.

So we have what looks like a coherent strategy to go after opponents,
weaken allies and portray oneself as the symbol of Iraqi nationalism in
dealing with the U.S. Is Maliki overreaching? Despite the Mahdi Army
setbacks, Sadrists could still do better at the polls (if they happen)
than Maliki's candidates. The Sahwa people could return to insurgency,
destroying the security advances of the last year. The Kurds could
undercut Maliki's government in parliament. An ambitious army general
could push him aside, if his control of the army is less than total.
But so far, Maliki seems to be on a winning streak.

From the point of view of the U.S., this move by Maliki presents problems and opportunities. The Bush Administration has always said that it
wants a functioning and able Iraqi central government. Maybe it is
getting that (in the Arab areas). Washington certainly seems to be
backing Maliki's strategy, if only because he is the PM and it seems to
be working. But both the Bush Administration and whoever succeeds it
wants the security situation in Iraq to remain relatively calm -- for
McCain, so Iraq stays off the front page and there is less domestic
pressure for withdrawal; for Obama, so he can get out cleanly.

The Maliki strategy runs the risks of upsetting that calm, in terms of
increasing the risks of a return of the Sunni insurgency and in terms
of possible clashes with the Kurds over Kirkuk. If Maliki seeks to
consolidate his hold by running managed elections at the provincial and
national levels next year, the "democratic mission" of the American
operation in Iraq takes yet another hit. At a minimum, Maliki's push
for power exposes the long-standing tensions in U.S. policy -- support
for central authority in Iraq but also support for regional authority
(the Kurds) and for local Sunni power brokers (Awakenings).

About a year ago I wrote something in which I said that Maliki was an
ineffectual loser. I was wrong. The issue now is whether his
political reach exceeds his grasp. I used to think that, eventually,
an ambitious army general would emerge from the Iraqi mess and take
control in Baghdad, making himself the new strongman of Iraqi politics.
Now I think it might not take a military coup to produce Iraq's new
strongman.

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Comments

I agree with more of this analysis than not.

The American strategy since Gen. Petraeus arrived has been to reduce the incidence of deadly violence in Iraq -- trying to prevent renewed conflagration by cutting the number of ignition sources, not the amount of fuel. The administration's critics here argued that this course was doomed to failure because it did nothing to address the persistanc of sectarian tension and did not force the government to compromise with factions outside it; the administration itself hoped that with violence reduced, the government and various factions around Iraq would eventually come to accomodations to prevent it from returning.

While it may be too early to form conclusions, we ought at least to consider the possibility that both the administration and its critics were mistaken, and that what has actually happened is that American tactics have so strengthened the central authority, while dividing and weakening factions outside the government, that American withdrawal would ultimately produce not a failed state or protracted civil strife but the suppression by the central government of any group capable of sustaining opposition. Arab governments generally don't share power unless they have to; if Maliki doesn't have to, he probably won't.

Of course, this may represent the present appearance more than it does the reality. The government's offensive against the Sadrists, for example, probably wouldn't have gone so well without American military support; he could try something similar against Sunni Arab militias or the Kurds, not get that support, and lose. Elections might be held and show dramatic popular discontent with the government, as suggested in this post. Or Maliki could be assassinated, another event that might force various Iraqi factions to revisit their calculations about the balance of power. It looks now as if he and his government is much stronger than they were, less dependent on the American army and more likely to dominate Iraq without it. This could always be an illusion.

But say, for the sake of argument, that Gause is on the right track here and Maliki is headed for caudillo status. Is this a bad outcome for the United States? Obviously it would be contrary to all the things the Bush administration has said about Operation Iraqi Freedom if it turned out that Bush's war had turned into Operation Iraqi Strongman. Also, the status of the Kurds could turn into a painful issue. Given, though, that as long as we see the form of the Iraqi government as a key American interest we are going to have to keep an army there -- and given that we cannot afford to keep an army there indefinitely -- is a thoroughly undemocratic Iraqi government that allowed us to liquidate the commitment in Iraq undesirable, or is it the best that can be done?